Grassroots Dreams (Soweto Gospel Choir)

"My eyes will see the beautiful gates
and the streets of gold
of the City of Salvation"

So while we tend to tiptoe around it, with phrases like the "drawing-together of creation" and the "reconciliation of all things," Advent is primarily about apocalypse, plain and simple. Jesus returns, and everything changes. 

This gets tricky for me, because growing up in my church context, apocalyptic visions in the Bible were a weird joke. Seriously, who actually believed in that stuff?

There was just a little teeny bit of privilege in my former attitude, I know. But I was raised understanding apocalyptic literature to be childish rage-dreams, mediated through booming voices on U.S. TV and radio. 

Little did I know that the original authors of these strange, vivid stories of God's triumph were almost always outside of the power system, voiceless to the "mainstream" culture. God's downtrodden, catastrophe-worn people sought a vision to dream them forward, and the revelatory prophecies and promises of both testaments offered meaning, endurance, and hope. 

These seemingly triumphant, even triumphalist, visions were actually words from the depths. 

"My eyes will see the beautiful gates 
and the streets of gold..."

From this angle, Advent isn't just a nice bow on the story of God and Creation. It definitely isn't just sort of demurely hoping everyone can be as happy (or privileged) as I am "someday," or lighting a candle and feeling vaguely sad for the "less fortunate," during the holidays. All that is all surface-level stuff -- but Advent surges from the depths. It lives in broken cracks in the sidewalk, in the dust of the street, in the shame and fear in our own hearts. Advent dwells in the deep, and this is where its most soul-stirring dreams are born.

Soweto Gospel Choir - "Jerusalem" (Live) - Voices from Heaven album version

This song has been on our Advent playlist since before the A.M.P. was born, but there never seemed like the right opening for it. But with Nelson Mandela's death yesterday, and the world looking at both his role in the anti-apartheid movement and his legacy for the future, a South African choir sings, sandwiched between the apartheid that was and the uncertainty of what will be:

"Jerusalem... my wishes and hopes are for you."

This is a dream worth dreaming: that "streets of gold" could spring up between these very cracks in the pavement. This is grassroots dreaming: standing in the Now, the In-Between, and letting our songs reflect our deepest hopes while also casting our gaze forward. Shining onward.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God [...]

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” 

- Rev 21: 1-5a, selected

May you find your Advent dreaming going deeper in these lengthening nights, and may your songs, your words, and your hands, reflect the love of God for all creation, today and always.

                                                            -- Anna

Choosing Danger (Sounds of Blackness)

There are no Christmas cards about courage, have you noticed? Peace, Joy, Goodwill to All... check, not much mention of courage. But if the Christmas story is about anything it is about the angels’ oft-repeated message: Do Not Be Afraid. And if anything is antithetical to the message of Christmas, it's fear.

Today, Sounds of Blackness sing these words into our consciousness:

What a lowly place to be born
What a lowly place to be born
Like a stranger, not far from danger
He was born in a manger: My Lord

This song reminds us that God chose to be born into a lowly place: born to refugee parents, of the underclass, homeless at the time of his birth. More than that, God chose to be born into danger, the very real dangers of poverty and oppression, and, later, the danger of an infant genocide sparked by the fear of a ruler.

We believe that this kind of birth, God breaking into the world in this way, reveals to us God’s deep concern for those on the margins of society.  The lowly birth of our God, and the ensuing life of Jesus, lived in solidarity with those on the edges of community, tell us that God stands with the suffering, the oppressed, the victims of injustice in every time.

Born In A Manger from Sounds of Blackness on Myspace.



This brings many of us to the discomfort of today's song: In the grand view of our country’s population (let alone the world’s population) most of us have received enough privilege to make the above theological claims feel a little dangerous.  Following a God who choses to stand with those on the margins, has implications for our own lives that might make us feel a little afraid.

Can we find the courage to question our own social privilege, our own wealth in order to be found, like our God, on the side of the lowly? Do we have the heart to wonder, as love is born again and again each year at Christmas, if there's a danger into which we are called to follow the lowly babe in the manger? Will we follow if the danger threatens our comfort, our image, our lifestyle as we seek to follow the God who stands with the marginalized and loves the lowly?



Let's hear, today, this Christmas message: 

Courage. 

Do not be afraid. 

For the Divine Love that was born in Bethlehem turned the world upside down to bring justice, peace, and fullness of life; and that Divine Love, seeks to do the same, as it is born anew in every time and place and heart (even ours’).

                                                                                                      - Lindsey